


Bearing the Scars of Our Loss

by stellahibernis



Series: I Still See Your Flame [1]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Birth of SHIELD, Bucky is rescued in the fifties, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Peggy's healthy distrust, Rescue, Steve is always in the periphery, never trust Zola, remembering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 21:02:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7377262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellahibernis/pseuds/stellahibernis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Everything is going as well as she imagined it could, and still she feels uneasy, as if something bad is just waiting to happen.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Carter!” Dugan yells from the backroom, clearly upset over something.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Peggy runs in and stops on her tracks. It takes her a moment to process what she’s seeing, because it’s impossible. “No,” she says, disbelieving. “This can’t be. How?”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“My God,” Falsworth whispers next to her. “Is he alive?”</i>
</p><p>***</p><p>In 1955 on a mission to Murmansk Peggy and the Howling Commandos find something they never could have imagined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bearing the Scars of Our Loss

It’s 1949 and SSR is in trouble.

Peggy knows this, has known it for a long time now. The agency never really found its feet after the war, didn’t manage to make a place for itself among the other agencies. Now there are too many people at the top that care more about politics than national security, and definitely care even less than that about international security. They can see the political climate tightening, the deepening divides between old allies, and the continuous threat of new kinds of weapons. Many of them try to use the growing fear to gain political power, instead of working to ease the situation, or planning for contingencies.

She and Daniel work tirelessly, but they both know the situation isn’t sustainable. They just don’t have enough power to steer the ship into the direction they believe it needs to go. It’s getting worse and worse, but it also seems there are no good alternatives at all.

Sometimes Peggy dreams about mushroom shaped clouds and bombs that devastate entire cities. Every time she wakes up after such a dream into the early morning hours she thinks of Steve, how he died to make sure New York and a lot of other cities didn’t become piles of rubble. She wonders what Steve would have thought of his country when they ended up being the ones to level cities full of civilians. Wonders what he would have thought about the fact that one of his close friends was part of the Manhattan project. On every morning like that she resolves to remember that she must have boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed, or soon enough she will be down the road at the end of which she’ll be no better than HYDRA. People say that end justifies means, but she knows it’s only to alleviate the guilt, to distract people into thinking they aren’t becoming monsters. Makes them blind to the truth that every step after will be easier.

It’s a day after a nightmare like that, and she’s in the office, working on her assignments. She still has to fight for every bit of important work she gets. It’s been almost five years since the end of the war, and she isn’t quite sure if she’s getting anywhere. The rational part of her brain reminds her that yes, she has made a difference, even if she isn’t getting the recognition she deserves. It also reminds her that the only thing she can do for now is to keep working, and to try and come up with alternative ways to reach her goals. The only other option is to give up, and that’s no option at all.

In the afternoon, when she’s already finished every assignment given to her (a stack of coded messages, because at least her talent in code breaking is acknowledged, undoubtedly because it is the kind of work that women generally did during the war) and is considering whether she should just go, the phone rings. Momentarily she is disappointed when she hears Jarvis’ voice, but she squashes the feeling fast. It’s not his fault he isn’t a new assignment. Her interest is piqued by his word choice, clearly carefully considered. For all intents, it sounds like a dinner invitation at Stark’s that night, but there is clearly something more.

“Mr. Stark asked me to tell you there will be some wartime company present, and much to discuss,” Jarvis says. Peggy agrees to go, thinking to herself that if this is one of Howard’s more frivolous ideas, she can punch him out.

When she gets to Howard’s place, she’s greeted by Jarvis and shown into the library where Howard is conversing with another man. He’s wearing a civilian suit, and it’s the first time Peggy has seen him like that.

“Good evening, General Phillips, Howard,” she greets them, remembering that Phillips was promoted right after the war. She’s glad to see him again; he was always strict and short tempered, but he appreciated skill, hers as well as anyone else’s. 

They exchange short greetings, but soon get to the point of why they asked her to come. They want to create a new intelligence agency, something that SSR could have been if not for all the politics. Phillips and Howard have enough pull among the right people, and will be able to get it off the ground. They want her to be part of it right from the start, to be there to lay out the groundwork. It doesn’t take long for her to agree. She might have reservations about some choices Howard has made and keeps making, but he does have the right idea, not to mention the scientific capability to be an invaluable asset if he chooses to be part of this. And Phillips was chosen to lead SSR during the war for a good reason; he has the ability to push beyond limits while also being practical. Peggy knows that with the three of them they can make this new agency into what she hoped SSR would be.

They talk about details into early hours, getting the outline of the operation sketched out. They talk about the organization, the level of secrecy needed, the international connections they have to make. They all agree that it’s not good for the US to draw into itself and distrust every other nation, as many of their colleagues seem to want to do. They need international cooperation, especially in the face of evidence that HYDRA’s influence is still lingering in the world.

It will take a lot of effort to even get started, careful recruitment to get the right people in so that it won’t be a mess where politics mean too much. Peggy knows politics can’t be completely taken out, it’s the world they live in. They all agree they need to limit the internal power struggles as much they can, at least in the early years. For all that, Peggy feels more hopeful than she has in a long time. It feels like this is what she was meant to do.

When she’s about to leave, she asks, “What are we going to call this agency?”

Howard grins and says, “I was thinking  _ Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. _ ”

It’s quite a mouthful, but Peggy sees the connection soon enough. “SHIELD,” she says, considering. “Fair enough.”

On the way home she thinks how it’s very obvious where Howard got the name from, what kind of thought lies behind it. Steve made an impact on all their lives, and this clearly is Howard’s way of honoring his memory and legacy. Peggy doesn’t really disagree, she thinks it’s fitting that the ideal Captain America was supposed to be about, that Steve had wanted Captain America to be about, would serve as a starting guideline for them on how to run the agency. 

It also occurs to her how different it is, the way she and Howard remember Steve. To Howard a lot of it is tied to what the shield had been all about, the Captain and his legacy, the part that Howard played in the story. When it comes to her, what she remembers is Steve, the man behind the shield, the one that didn’t change from what he was before he got the serum. Not fundamentally. She remembers the man that had been worthy all along, even when not that many people could see it. She knew only two people besides herself, and those two are also gone now. 

But the name works for her; she thinks Steve would appreciate the idea, even if he would also be embarrassed about it. There are a lot of things Steve would be embarrassed about, she thinks. All the ways the country remembers him. All the ways that are different from how she remembers him, the more private and painful way. It’s a pain she’s learned to accept and carry. She knows how to look ahead.

***

Over the next month they work out the details. They get the initial funding secured, decide that they should set up a base at the now discontinued Camp Lehigh, and start discussing who they should recruit. The organization will start small, with the three of them as founding members. Phillips is going to be the director, Peggy the head of Operations and Howard the head of R&D. Then they start choosing people for the other leading positions, and it’s not at all a surprise when Howard says that Daniel would be a good fit to lead the Intelligence department.

It’s a relief to be able to tell Daniel why she’s been preoccupied during the last weeks. He of course knew something was up. If he hadn’t, he really wouldn’t be suitable for the position, which he is. He’s always been meticulous and inventive when it came to chasing leads, capable of doing it himself but also inspiring other people to do the work.

In another month the headquarters at Camp Lehigh is ready and they leave their jobs at SSR. It’s hard work and long days, trying to find the right people, fighting to take their place in the network of power, but Peggy feels fulfilled in her job the way she hasn’t since the war. There are still people who don’t take her seriously due to her gender, but now she’s the person calling the shots, and it starts to work.

Operations and Intelligence work closely together for obvious reasons, and Peggy and Daniel work together as well as they always did. They keep their relationship private, not letting people at SHIELD know about them, with some exceptions. It’s something they agreed to do early on, because they knew leading SHIELD would put a target on their heads more than before, and they are determined to give the least amount of targets to people gunning for them. In private it’s a whole another story, and Peggy is truly happy, with all aspects of her life.

A year after the founding of SHIELD, in 1951, Peggy and Daniel are married. It’s a quiet ceremony; present are their closest relatives, Howard, the Jarvis couple, General Phillips, Rose, Angie who’s getting a bit of name for herself in the theater circles, and the Howling Commandos. It’s a perfectly beautiful fall day.

 

* * *

 

It’s 1952 when the first major disagreement among the three founding members of SHIELD happens.

Operation Paperclip has brought dozens, hundreds even, of Nazi scientists to work in the US. Peggy gets it, gets the reasoning, and knows that some of them had been acting out of self preservation instead of true idealism. There are still aspects about it that make her uneasy. And then comes the meeting where the subject of Arnim Zola is brought up. That is a step too far, in Peggy’s opinion. The anger is expected and yet it surprises even her. It isn’t hot and loud, but a cold fury, and she can hear her voice becoming clipped and careful.

“Have you forgotten what he did? Have you forgotten what he is responsible for? He isn’t someone who acted out of self preservation, no matter how much he feared Schmidt. He was all in. How can you even consider this?” she demands.

“For all that, he’s still a genius in several fields,” Howard starts and Peggy turns to glare at him. “We could gain a lot from him. For one, he worked on Erskine’s serum —”

Peggy doesn’t let him continue. “Oh, so are we going there again? Even if it was a good idea to try again, which I don’t believe it is, do you really want to go for it with a man whose methods include torture and mutilation?”

“Come on Peggy, you know the situation of the world. We have to be realists,” Howard says, starting to get exasperated. “We need every weapon we can get.”

“And if we go down that road, where does it stop? How do we keep from sliding down the slippery slope? We’ll just keep going until we are the same as HYDRA.”

She and Howard stare at each other, Peggy angry, Howard clearly trying to find something to say that won’t make her dig deeper into her stance.

Phillips breaks the silence. “There is another aspect to consider,” he says and Peggy turns to look at him. He looks like a man about to do something he’d rather not, and Peggy feels cold. “The government is bringing him in, that’s already decided. If we don’t take him, someone else will. You know the army would love to get another crack at the serum. If he’s here we can keep an eye on him, control what he does. It beats the alternative.”

Peggy looks into the far wall for a full minute, thinking, even if she knows she’s already made her decision. She hates it, hates having to make these kind of compromises, but Phillips is right. The alternative would be worse. There are a lot of people like Howard Stark who look at the possibilities brought by Zola’s skills, and forget to consider the cost. It’s the same argument they’ve been having with Howard for a long time. “Fine. But we keep him on a tight leash.”

***

Zola is brought in, with a lot of conditions that he seemingly agrees to. For all appearances he’s a timid man, one that just wants to concentrate on science, but Peggy isn’t buying it. She doesn’t bother to check her hostility, there is a good reason for it after all, and they mostly don’t interact. 

In secret, they agree with Daniel that he will keep a closer eye on Zola than the official contract specifies, to make sure. Daniel shares Peggy’s gut instinct that it’s a bad idea to trust Zola, even after months pass and nothing suspicious turns up.

They all keep busy, trying to deal with the rising tension and conflicts all over the world. SHIELD keeps growing and marking its place.

 

* * *

 

It’s 1955, and it turns out Peggy was right to not trust Zola. 

She’s spent a quiet evening at home after saying goodbye to Ana Jarvis, who looks after her and Daniel’s daughter Mandy while they’re at work. She made dinner and has just put Mandy to sleep when Daniel comes in looking grim.

He gets right to the point. “It’s Zola. He’s on a leave, right? Well, guess where he’s gone. To  _ Russia. _ ”

Peggy just stares at him. “That’s so far away from what he’s allowed to do,” she finally says. “What else you got?”

“He’s in Murmansk. Apparently a group of Russians that are HYDRA sympathizers if not actually HYDRA themselves have set up a base there. They managed to hide the construction among the general rebuilding of the city after the war.”

“Do we know what their objective is?”

“No. But we know they are a small group, although well-funded. Could be anything, but considering Zola is in it, it’s probably something in his wheelhouse.”

Peggy presses her lips together. “And we know exactly what that is.”

“You’re going to go after him, aren’t you?”

“You bet. Get everyone back to SHIELD and prepare your data. I’m taking Mandy to Ana.”

***

It is a unanimous decision that Zola is a traitor, and that they need to find out what he’s been up to. No one seems to care whether he is brought back alive, which suits Peggy just fine. A cold part of her mind reminds her that it might be better if Zola doesn’t come back, because his capabilities mean that there will be someone willing to overlook his traitorous nature and let him in on some other government project, instead of having him rot in a cell where he belongs.

Another part of Peggy notes how little the thought bothers her, reminding her of her hardened edges, and that she needs to keep an eye on them.

They are on the way to Russia in no time, partly because they have protocols ready for infiltrating most of the strategically important cities in the world, especially in countries where they believed HYDRA or their ilk still has a foothold. Murmansk is an important port city, was that during the war and is now during the tentative peace. Thus they only need to grab a plan and adjust it for the amount of people going in. They are prepared and on the way early the next morning. Back at base, Daniel is setting out to vet everyone in SHIELD again, to find the people who may have been influenced by Zola, and Howard is going to review all the projects. Peggy straps on her gear and leaves for the airfield with her team.

From intelligence they know that Zola has only a few people with him in Murmansk, and no real pull to get aid from any of the local powers. It means they can go in with a small team. It’s a relief, because the larger the team, the harder it would be to get them across the border unnoticed, not to mention everyone going in needs to be trustworthy. And right now, there are not many people Peggy trusts. 

Her team is an obvious choice really, because there’s no one she trusts more to have her back on field. Not to mention, with their history, the Howling Commandos deserve to be the ones to take care of Zola once and for all. On the first leg of the trip they’re in the hold of a cargo plane, nestled in between boxes and bundles. Dugan is boisterous as ever, the loud exterior hiding his caring nature. Jim is still the quietest one, his sense of humor dark. He’s more at ease now that his family is back home, the camps a bad memory, even though the bitterness lingers. Gabe is there with his easy smiles and effortless intelligence that always helped him picking up new languages, and has now sped him through degrees in physics and engineering. When he gets older and doesn’t want to go on the field anymore, he’ll have a place at the R&D department. They check their gear and otherwise fall into easy discussion, much like they used to during the war. They have a job to do and no one better to do it.

The flight is long and they try to sleep the best they can, because they will have fewer chances the closer they got to Murmansk, and there they need to perform their best. They switch planes in Shannon and then in London, where Falsworth and Dernier join them. They too are much as Peggy remembers them, if older, but that’s true about all of them. Still, they’re all filled with steely determination. They don’t pause, just get onto another cargo plane, and there they refine their plan of attack and make sure again that they have everything they need. 

It’s been almost two days since their departure from New York when they land in Rovaniemi, but they don’t take a break. They take the car provided by their contact and head towards north-east, choosing progressively smaller roads. They leave the car hidden in the woods and cross the border without incident under the cover of darkness, and then make the trek through the wilderness towards the agreed rendezvous site. It’s still around 130 miles to their target.

They are right on time, as is Yelena with her car and warm tea. It’s so normal, as if she was there just to pick up friends, that Peggy can’t help but laugh. Yelena grins at her, knowing exactly what she’s thinking. Yelena came through the same program as Dottie Underwood, where little girls were trained into assassins and spies, but she decided she wanted to choose her future for herself. Only it is difficult to just let it all go, so she came to Peggy, who, after a period of rigorous vetting, has come to trust her. She’s been worthy of it so far.

As they near Murmansk, the easy chatter falls away and they all become focused, getting their heads on mission mode. Yelena keeps an eye on the speed, and they arrive to the outskirts of the city just when darkness is falling. Peggy thanks her stars it’s spring and not summer. It’s still cold, very much so and snow lingers on the ground, but at least they have the cover of darkness. Midnight sun would give them too many potential complications.

It’s all surprisingly easy in the end. The team works seamlessly, Yelena falls effortlessly into their flow just as she’s been trained to do. The HYDRA or whoever they fancy themselves have set up their operation in a bunker underground, which is convenient since it prevents anyone nearby hearing the inevitable gunshots. There are only ten men besides Zola; two of them with military training and the rest some kind of scientists that know nothing about weapons. It doesn’t prevent them from trying to shoot, but Peggy’s team escapes unharmed while the enemies are subdued.

In the end all of them are dead, some due to cyanide pills, as HYDRA operatives always tend to do. Everyone dead, with the exception of Zola who’s lying on the ground, coughing and gasping. A stray bullet shot by one of the people on his side found its way into his chest, and blood is filling his lungs. Peggy steps to stand next to him, to make sure he knows he has been found out. She makes no move to help him, and neither does anyone else.

“Here it ends then. You never should have thought you could get away with this. Not on my watch,” she just remarks.

Zola coughs, clearly near death, and rasps out, “You look so satisfied. You shouldn’t.”

Then he is gone.

***

Zola’s words hang heavy on her mind when Peggy orders everyone to check they are safe, but it turns out they are. No one outside seems to have been alerted to what’s going on, and Zola’s group sent no messages. After making sure, Peggy’s team starts to look through the documents and equipment in the complex to see what Zola and his group have been up to. They also try to find any and all information on their connections. Soon it becomes clear that even if lot of the documents are coded, they’ve struck gold. There are a lot of names, connections and dates. They pack up everything that looks even remotely useful. They work fast, intending to be gone by dawn, but they’re not really pressed for time since they still have hours. Everything is going as well as she imagined it could, and still she feels uneasy, as if something bad is just waiting to happen.

“Carter!” Dugan yells from the backroom, clearly upset over something but not in warning.

Peggy runs in and stops on her tracks. It takes her a moment to process what she’s seeing, because it’s impossible. “No,” she says, disbelieving. “This can’t be. How?”

She’s faintly aware of the rest of her team rushing in, all of the Commandos voicing their surprise and distress. In front of them is a large tank of water, connected to generators. The whole room is freezing cold, and now she understands why all of the scientists seemed to be wearing too many clothes. There are ice crystals patterning the corners of the tank. Inside floats a man that’s instantly recognizable as James Barnes, although he doesn’t look much like he did during the war. His hair is longer than it used to be, floating around his face in the tank, and there’s stubble growing on his face, uneven, as if the last time he shaved, or was shaved, it was done poorly and fast. Most noticeable is his left arm, that is now made of metal, clearly still a work in progress, but apparently crafted into his body.

“My God,” Falsworth whispers next to her. “Is he alive?”

Gabe flips through the notebook on the table next to the tank and after a few minutes nods. “Yes. I don’t know how they found him, but it says here they bring him out at times. Last time according to the logs was a couple of months ago. Whatever their purpose, it is probably described in these other books.” He waves at a stack of folders and notebooks on the table.

“We need to take him out,” Peggy says.

Next to her Dugan echoes, “We’re not leaving him now.”

Gabe goes through the folders and then scans through the papers in one. Peggy notes they’re in German. “Okay, here are instructions on how to do it. But it’s going to take three hours just to get him out, and we don’t know how mobile he is right after. We can’t hurry it, otherwise he’ll die during the process.”

Peggy looks at her watch, and next to her Yelena says, “It’ll cut close, but it’s doable. But I don’t know if you’ll make it out of the country the way you came in if he’s out of it.”

Peggy nods. “Okay Gabe, get to it. The others will help you if needed. Anyone else, keep gathering the data. Yelena and I will think about the exit,” she says. “I still think it’s best for us to go back to Finland, that’s the fastest way out of the country. We’ll carry him if we must.”

“But in the city that might raise attention, and even if no one will stop you, I don’t think it’s good to have witnesses that remember something odd was going on,” Yelena says.

“No, and we better not let them see your car either.” Peggy eyes at the men still lying where they died. “Let’s find out how these guys get in. And how they get their supplies here.”

Peggy and Yelena go through the pockets of the men, and one of the guards has a bundle of keys, some of them for cars. On the ground level inside the warehouse they find a car, and then a truck with covered bed. “This’ll get us out of the city,” Peggy says, satisfied and determined.

Back in the bunker, Gabe is monitoring the thawing process while flipping through some of the notebooks. “Some of these are in Russian,” he says and points to them when Yelena steps forward. She starts going through them at the speed of a trained spy. “We need to take all of these to really understand what happened, but here’s a lot about his physical state.”

“Anything on how he survived?” Peggy asks.

“Yes. And it’s, well. Back when we were HYDRA’s prisoners, he was taken to Zola’s lab, right? That’s where Cap found him.” There’s a faintest tremor in Gabe’s voice when he mentions Steve. “He didn’t remember what they did, or at least said he didn’t, but here it says Zola had tried his version of the serum on him.”

“And clearly he succeeded,” Peggy says, her voice tight. She knows how high the drop from the train was, there was no way anyone should have survived. But they’d been wrong.

“Clearly. The Russian HYDRA sympathizers found him and after the war Zola got his hands on him. His left arm was too damaged by the impact, so they amputated and built him another one. There are other things here, they were testing his capabilities and such. It’s a lot more than I can read now, and I’ve been concentrating on what his state might be after we wake him up.”

“And?” Peggy asks.

“It says that he’s usually out of it for a while, but is mobile very fast and regains his full physical capabilities within few hours. I think he will be able to walk when we need to cross the border.”

“That’ll help.”

“It’s not going to be simple,” Yelena says, still skimming the notes in Russian.

“What did you find?” Peggy asks, dreading the answer, remembering Zola’s words.

“They wanted to make him work for them, to be their assassin. There are notes about conditioning and brainwashing here. Drugs, although those don’t seem to work that well with the serum. A lot of similar things they did with us. And it says his memory is jumbled, due to the fall and trauma from that. They also speculate on electroshocks, but they don’t seem to have gotten there yet.”

“And what does that all mean?” Dugan demands.

Yelena’s gaze in steady when she says, “Even if that man looks like your friend, you don’t know who will emerge from the tank. He might try to kill us all. You need to be prepared for that.”

“We’ll cross that bridge if it comes to that,” Peggy says. “But whoever he is, he is still our friend, and we will do whatever we can to help him.”

All the Commandos nod.

***

Time ticks by as the temperature in the tank rises. They start packing away the documents deemed useful. The most important ones they will take with them, the rest will be left with Yelena so that she can have them delivered. Dernier lays out firebombs around the base, so that they can burn it down after they’re gone, to prevent anyone from finding anything useful. They find blankets and clothes for Barnes, and eat to keep their strength up. They’ve only been taking naps since landing in Rovaniemi almost two days earlier, and it’ll be more than a full day before they will be on the plane again and able to sleep. It’s not strange; they used to get by with catnaps during the war, but it’s been years since then, and even if the work at SHIELD means unpredictable hours, this is much more taxing.

Gabe keeps watch on the time and the temperature, and Peggy can’t help but feel anxiety swelling inside her. What will Barnes be like now, ten years after he was presumed dead, having gone through unimaginable things. Will he remember them? Will he remember anything about what he’s lost? That they all have lost. 

It’s a memory she thinks will never dim, the moment she’d seen Steve after they were back from apprehending Zola, successful but for the first time defeated in the most horrible way. She’d known right then that everything had been changed. It hadn’t been just sorrow, it had felt as if a light had been snuffed out inside Steve, and she had known with absolute clarity that it would never come back.

Except. She wonders if it would have come back this night, if Steve had only survived. She wonders if Steve would have fought harder to survive if he’d had an inkling that a day like this was waiting for him in the future.

Truth is, she doesn’t have to wonder.

Minutes pass, the temperature keeps rising, and they all stare at the tank. Then, suddenly, the fingers of Barnes’ right hand twitch, and Gabe is pulling levers to drain the tank, to open the panels. Barnes falls into the arms of waiting Dugan and Falsworth, and he’s eased onto the floor, covered with blankets. He coughs out some of the fluid and then draws a ragged breath, and another. He blinks but clearly can’t see anything yet. His left hand makes a fist, as if he’s testing. Then he stills, waiting.

Dugan crouches in front of him. “Barnes? Hear me?”

Barnes jolts, clearly with a surprise, and he blinks more, trying to focus. “Dum Dum?” he finally asks, his voice raspy but familiar, laced with disbelief.

“Yes, it’s me,” Dugan says, clearly holding back emotion. “It’s all of us. We’re taking you back home, Sarge.”

Peggy has to blink rapidly to clear away the tears threatening to fall. Distantly she thinks,  _ It’s not all of us, and who’s going to tell him? _ But it’s not the pressing matter that she has to deal with. First they need to get away.

She steps closer and crouches low as well. “Sergeant, we need to move soon. Do you think you can make it?”

Barnes raises his eyes to meet hers, and now they are clear, his voice more even, breathing slowed down to normal. “Just lead the way, Agent Carter. I can make it.”

Peggy has no doubt.

***

The trek back goes again about as effortlessly as they could have hoped. They get away without disturbance and are several miles away when they see smoke rising from the city, the fire clearly having broken out. It’s something that will draw attention, but they couldn’t afford to leave everything as it was or even to pay local criminals to take care of it. They will later feed the information about it being a local HYDRA cell and that it must have been internal power struggle. Not that far away from truth really. The fire will cover the signs that someone was there and took things. 

Yelena drops them off near the border and they cross it under the cover of night. Barnes not only keeps up, he’s the most alert of them all, reminding Peggy that he was one of their best at stealth. Now that she knows Barnes had the serum all along, a lot of things start to make sense, including his sometimes preternatural seeming endurance. She wonders if he knew, if he realized that something wasn’t quite like it used to be after Steve found him in Austria. She doesn’t ask, not yet.

Barnes is quiet, apparently completely focused on just getting away. He doesn’t talk about anything except necessities, and they all respect the boundary he seems to have drawn around himself. Back in Rovaniemi they don’t have to wait long to be off, and when they are on the plane they collapse among the cargo and sleep. They switch planes at Stockholm, and then again in Shannon, for the last leg of their journey. This time Falsworth and Dernier come with them.

On the last plane they eat first and then most of them continue sleeping. Peggy stays up, as does Barnes even though she’s not sure if he’s slept at all yet. He was always awake before when she roused herself. She pulls out some of the documents, intending to start working on them as much as she can, when Barnes gets to his feet and comes closer. She meant to just leave him in peace for as long as he wanted, because she knows there will be no easy conversations. Now that he’s taking initiative, she acknowledges him.

“Did you bring the notes they had on me?” he asks.

Peggy hands him the parcel holding them, and says, “They’re all in German and Russian, though.”

His answer is a somewhat crooked smile, his first since waking up, and something soft in Russian. “I had a lot of time to learn.” When he’s moving away he pauses and asks, “What year is it?”

“1955,” she says, and doesn’t know what kind of a reply she was expecting, but the casual nod wasn’t it.

For the rest of the flight Barnes is immersed in the notebooks and Peggy tries to concentrate on the files, but finds she can’t. Her head is too busy for her to be able to make sense any of it. She gives up and lies down, not able to sleep either.

Back during the war she couldn’t quite figure out what Barnes thought of her, or of Stark for that matter. After that meeting in the bar he was always perfectly polite and professional with her, and she thought he genuinely respected her for her skills, which was rare enough. What she couldn’t tell was whether he liked her at all, as someone potentially becoming a part of his best friend’s life. The fact that she couldn’t tell hinted to her that he probably didn’t like her, because he was generally very good at keeping his thoughts and opinions to himself unless they were needed. Especially if they were somehow negative. She had thought it was possibly due to the fact that they were a new part of Steve’s life, one that Barnes didn’t really seem to want to get into that much. He stuck with the Commandos, and Steve was the one going with both groups.

In general during the war Barnes had been quiet, prone to brooding, and sometimes Peggy saw the shadows in his eyes, the kind that told her he’d seen more than he should have. With his team and other soldiers he occasionally became more lively, but it always felt a little bit like an act, even when he clearly cared about all the Commandos. It was only sometimes, when it was just him and Steve talking, that she saw a glimpse of another man, one without so many walls kept up around his soul. And if those glimpses happened even when there were other people around, she had sometimes wondered what he was like when they were truly alone.

There used to be a similar change in Steve, she had noticed, when it was just him and Barnes talking, maybe a little away from everyone else. Steve had held himself differently, slouching a little more, less aware of people around them. He’d just been completely comfortable, the way he never was otherwise. It was probably the effect of them having known each other since childhood, the kind of knowing that couldn’t come from anywhere else.

Now Steve is gone, and the Barnes sitting a few yards away from her is a different man from what she remembers. There are things she recognizes, but there is another layer in him, another layer of danger in every movement of his. It’s just a hint, and one that she could dismiss, but she remembers what Yelena said. There must be hidden depths now, and she thinks she might yet get to see them. She thinks it will probably be more difficult for Barnes than she can now imagine. She wonders if the man that used come to surface only for Steve is now completely gone.

***

They’ve been gone for about a week when they land in New York, but it feels like it’s been much longer for Peggy. They radioed in that they had a guest, but had refrained from saying any names, since it is better that stray ears don’t hear the news yet. They have cars waiting at the airfield, ready to take them back to the base. Barnes had huffed when he’d heard their organization was called SHIELD, but otherwise hadn’t commented on it. Or on anything, really.

It’s just Peggy and Dugan in addition to the driver in the car with Barnes, when he finally speaks, not looking at either one of them but steadily gazing out through the window, “Can you take me to see Steve?”

The silence is heavy, and right then Peggy has no words. It’s the moment she’s been dreading since she first recognized him, learned that he was alive after all. Yet it’s nothing that she could prepare for. She draws a breath and squeezes her eyes shut, and still nothing comes out. 

It’s Dugan who finally breaks the silence, his voice cracking, “Look Barnes, Cap —”

He doesn’t get any further before Barnes makes an impatient motion with his hand. His voice is almost entirely without inflection when he speaks. “I know he’s gone. They told me. Dredged up newspapers, and radio broadcasts. Enough that I knew it wasn’t fabricated. They thought it would break me, would make me do what they wanted. As if.” There is a brief flash of contempt in his eyes that disappears when he turns to look at Peggy. “I just want to. You know.”

He doesn’t seem to have words either, but Peggy knows anyway. He wants to pay his respects. To say whatever he has to say, even if Steve won’t be able to hear. That is something he already accepts. And yet, she still has to disappoint him.

She’s surprised at how steady her voice is when she finally finds it. “We never found him. Stark had ships and planes looking, still has, but nothing has turned up.”

She falls silent as Barnes turns away from her again and looks out of the window, clearly hiding his face. There’s one violent shudder that goes through his entire body, but otherwise he stays silent. Peggy turns to look out of the other window, half to give him privacy with the grief that must have struck fresh, half to hide her own eyes that have welled with tears. It’s been years since she last cried because of Steve, but she does now.

For Steve, for herself, and for the man next to her, who never got to say goodbye.

**Author's Note:**

> As you may have noticed, I created this as a part of series even if there is only this one fic for now. The series will center on Bucky as he is here, rescued already in 1955, a different man but not yet the Winter Soldier. I'm going to write from both Bucky's POV as well as others'. Peggy got this first one, because who else was going to save him? We'll track his progress through decades, and he'll meet a lot of familiar characters. At some point we'll reach 2012 and the reunion he deserves. I'm not necessarily going to do these in chronological order, more like what strikes my fancy, but they should be self-contained enough, as well as rely on general MCU timeline, so as to not get too confusing.
> 
> If you're interested, I rambled about some of my ideas for this when I first came up with it on my tumblr [here](http://stellahibernis.tumblr.com/post/145954082987/i-kind-of-didnt-need-another-idea-but-its-not). It's obviously evolved since then, but none of that is misleading.


End file.
